You get to know what someone is really like when you go away with them.

I used to see a boy called Roger in my exercise class once a week. He was very quiet and smiled a lot. One day, he asked me to go to the local fish and chips restaurant after our workout. After we had finished gorging ourselves on our food – we had finished ourselves off with an apple crumble, he asked me to go on holiday with him.

‘I’m desperate to go away,’ he said.

‘I’m game,’ I enthused.

My parents had offered to take me to South of France for a holiday but I declined their generous offer. I didn't know anyone who went away with their parents any more. When I went to Nice with mum and dad when I was twelve, I liked the chocolate croissants for breakfast but loathed the rest of the French fodder like onion soup, which I vomited up after gulping it down – a bit unfortunate really, as I was having lunch on the beach at the time.

Roger and I marched into the local travel agent after we had finished stuffing our guts, and bought a package holiday to Tenerife. Neither of us had been there before, so we were both excited. My parents were dubious when I told them I was going on holiday with a boy, but when I lied and pointed out Roger wasn’t remotely interested in girls, they were happy to let me go.

I’d only ever seen Roger in his gym clothes before. Even when we went to scoff fish and chips, he hadn’t bothered to change out of his track suit. So, I had a big shock when I arranged to meet him at Gatwick airport and saw he was dressed in shocking pink jeans and a vivid turquoise shiny jacket, which was decorated with what appeared to be the crown jewels. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he was wearing a straw hat with the words, ‘Kiss Me Quick’ on it. Horrors! I tried to pretend I wasn’t with him, but he stuck to me like glue, cracking loud and obnoxious jokes to anyone who was unlucky to catch his eye. He was usually such a quiet kind of fellow but suddenly it was as if he was a gaudy butterfly emerging from his drab chrysalis. He was louder than crashing symbols.

Fortunately, my holiday companion and I didn’t see each other during the day when we were away. He went to a gym, while I played tennis with the local pro, but in the evening we would always meet up and go out for a meal. Roger was so thick-skinned he didn’t realise that everyone in the restaurant was staring at his gaudy appearance. Every night, without fail he glittered from head to toe in his gigantic pieces of costume jewellery and wore clothes garish enough to illuminate the whole of Tenerife. If that wasn’t bad enough, he would then get wildly merry on a glass of wine and insist we go out clubbing afterwards. Luckily, he had no interest in dancing with me. He was after the locals and insisted on doing a dance which he called the rum baba, gyrating his hips and gliding his nose over the floor when he drunkenly fell over, which was all the time. I wasn’t the only person who judged him a crashing bore for nobody would go near him with a bargepole.

Night after night, he insisted on staying at clubs until dawn, leaving me to walk back to our self-catered apartment by myself when I could no longer stomach seeing him make a daft spectacle of himself. After a week of this, I was ready to delete him from my address book for good. I had gone off him in a big way. What had happened to the meek and polite Roger I knew in England? And, would he ever be the same again? I would never know because after we returned to London, he informed me I was no fun at all and that I had ruined his holiday. He stopped coming to my exercise class and I never saw him again. I later heard he became a holiday rep in the Costa del Sol.

Copyright: Frances Lynn, 2007